3 dead in Maryland mall shooting

Police officers escort employees and shoppers from the mall after the shooting in Columbia, Maryland. (AFP)

Columbia (Maryland), Jan. 25 (Reuters): Three persons died in a shooting at a large shopping mall outside Baltimore today, police said, adding that the suspected gunman apparently killed himself.

Howard county police said they believed the mall in Columbia, Maryland, was secure and they were contacting shoppers to help them leave the complex.

An emergency 911 call was received at about 1615 GMT reporting that shots had been fired at the Mall of Columbia, a sprawling shopping centre with about 200 stores about 48km north of Washington, DC.

“We had officers quickly get into the area and we were able to identify three victims at an upper level store in the Columbia Mall, one of those victims appears to be the shooter,” Howard county police chief Bill McMahon said.

“We are very confident that it was a single shooter and there are no other shooters in the mall,” he said. McMahon said police did not immediately know the identities of the dead and did not know the motive of the shooter.

“So right now we still have many, many people still in the mall who have secured themselves inside stores,” he said.

Colin Reddy, who works at the mall, told CNN he heard about eight or nine shots in all. “We thought it was construction because there’s a lot of construction going on at the mall right now. Then I heard it again. Like ‘boom, boom, boom’. And then everybody started running,” he said.